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The Port City will be built by a unit of state-controlled China Communications Construction Co. (1800) on 233 hectares (576 acres) of reclaimed land, an area slightly larger than Monaco. The offices, hotels, apartments and shopping centers will draw as much as $20 billion in investment over about 15 years, according to ports authority chairman Priyath Wickrama.

Civil society is not a monolith and most certainly should not be. However, at the same time it is vital that those who profess to be like-minded on issues of human rights, reconciliation and governance, hold true to the principles underpinning them. Engagement or non-engagement is a choice to be made by each organization, critically though on the basis of a common understanding of these principles and the need to uphold them at all times to the best of one’s ability. It is also about conveying this unequivocally in engagement.

Three months since the Aluthgama attack, there is limited information in the public domain on action taken to bring perpetrators to account. That there is still is no justice for the victims of religious violence in Aluthgama and elsewhere in Sri Lanka, illustrates the sheer impunity with which perpertrators of such violence operate and the GoSL’s unwillingness and/or inability to end to widespread religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka.

Tamil National Alliance leader and Sri Lankan MP R Sampanthan today alleged that the island nation government was not interested in implementing the 13th Amendment and was only impeding the functioning of the Northern Provincial Council.

« On 4th August, I was at the Centre for Society & Religion (CSR), along with some other human rights defenders, lawyers, clergy and diplomats. CSR is located in the premises of a Catholic church in the heart of Colombo. We had gathered for a “listening and sharing” meeting with some families of Tamil disappeared persons. It was a small, invitation only, private gathering. Just when some families had started to share their pains and struggles, a mob including some Buddhist Monks broke into CSR and tried to enter the meeting room where we were having the meeting. Some of us from Colombo tried to stop the mob from getting inside the meeting room and pleaded with them to leave. I saw the families of disappeared – children – men – women, had left the chairs and were sitting on the ground, cowering in fear, with some crying and some clinging on to diplomats and Catholic sisters who were present. The Police rejected our appeals to provide protection to the meeting and families of disappeared persons and disperse the invaders. »

University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) member Rajan Hoole writes about his late colleague and friend Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, on the 25th anniversary of her assassination.

« Her actions were about integrity in the commitments she had undertaken rather than popularity or fame. She sought to work among the outcasts of society, whose sufferings were good for nationalist propaganda, but not to identify with and find common cause. She worked with women who had been abused and traumatised. Once politically motivated and able to stand up for themselves, they could become a bastion of strength within society to change people’s outlook and attitudes. As part of their education they were encouraged to learn from experiences and struggles in other societies. She felt a deep sense of solidarity for struggles everywhere, particularly the plight of hill country Tamils and the Sinhalese rural folk caught up in terror and counter-terror during her last years. It stands testimony to her character and sense of mission that she returned from England with her two little daughters into the web of the very organisation whose inhumanity she had come to detest. »

12 September 2014 – Expressing grave concern today about the resumption of arrests, detention and deportation of asylum-seekers and refugees in Sri Lanka, the United Nations refugee agency called on the Government to refrain from such actions and abide by its obligations under international law.

The International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to announce the launch of Working Paper No: 13 on the theme of Post War Reconciliation titled,Competing for Victimhood Status: Northern Muslims and the Ironies of Post-War Reconciliation, Justice and evelopmentby Farzana Haniffa.

The northern Muslims together with all protracted IDPs displaced prior to 2008 became a low priority case load for return and resettlement assistance in the aftermath of the ‘end’ of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. Framed in terms of an ethics of ‘greatest need’ connected only to funding availability, all Old IDPs lost out in the resettlement process. This paper attempts to decentre this idea of economic limits and humanitarian need by discussing the manner in which such ideas of ‘greatest need’ actually emerge from discourses about victimhood that are part of an ethical humanitarian project to which local politics are irrelevant. This paper will show, however that these initiatives consistently intersect with local power hierarchies and local ideas of legitimacy and belonging. Therefore this paper will look at the manner in which the war related victim discourse of International Humanitarianism, helped to exacerbate northern Muslims own marginality and continued exclusion from the north. Looking also at the manner in which victimhood narratives are mobilizsed in Sri Lanka by electoral politics, and displaced IDP activists themselves, this paper will speculate about the efficacy of the victim identity for political and social transformation during this time of transition in Sri Lanka.

The Conference Committee are happy to announce the 5th Sri Lanka Graduate Conference and welcome all submissions. Please see the call for papers below.

Sri Lanka Otherwise? Resituating Topography and Temporality

2014 Sri Lanka Graduate Conference

The 2014 Sri Lanka Graduate Conference will be held on November 7th and 8th at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. The conference is co-funded by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Center for South Asia, Stanford. As with the four previous graduate conferences, this workshop will bring together graduate students both in the final writing up stage and pre-research/planning stages from a variety of disciplines and institutions. The graduate conference aims to enhance intellectual exchange on Sri Lanka; emphasize the production of empirical and non-sectarian knowledge; focus attention on recent transformations of key concepts; strengthen and build a new cohort of researchers across disciplines and institutions; and strengthen relationships between American graduate students and local intellectual circles in Sri Lanka.

For 2014, our conference is titled “Sri Lanka Otherwise? Resituating Topography and Temporality.” In keeping with the term, “otherwise”, we suggest a speculative theme for this year. “Otherwise” suggests we ask ourselves what it would be like to think in circumstances different than those present or considered. Current academic, political and policy debates across the political spectrum in Sri Lanka are concerned with speculating about Sri Lanka’s pasts and futures, and with re-envisioning its spaces. We suggest that contributors to the conference either present papers that put forward different ways of thinking about Sri Lanka’s spaces and temporal schemas, or, soberly examine the current mode of speculation. What might a different spatiotemporal imagination produce, if, for example, we stop thinking of Sri Lanka as an island unto itself? What are the spatiotemporal orders that anchor dominant tropes? What kinds of futures and pasts are being narrated, hoped for, described, and implemented, and, what do we as scholars have to say about this? We welcome papers across a range of disciplines and time periods.

The workshop will take place over 2 days. On November 7th, the first session will include a small closed pre-dissertation development seminar for selected participants (see below for details). We will also be holding a special session in memoriam of the distinguished anthropologist of South and South-East Asia, Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah. On November 8th we will host three student panels.

Our call for papers invites three sets of participants. Firstly, paper and panel proposals for the three student panels. Panel proposals and single papers proposals are due on October 8th. Secondly, we invite participants to apply for the pre-dissertation development seminar. This seminar is to assist graduate students in developing their research projects and will be a closed session for 4-5 participants. Students in Masters and PhD programs across the humanities and social sciences are encouraged to apply. Those interested in the Pre-dissertation Development Seminar should email a 300-word explanation of your interests and why you would like to participate by October 8th. Those who wish to participate in the conference without presenting must send expressions of their interest by October 11th. We have limited funding for travel.